Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/30/25: Trump Bullies Bezos, GDP Shrinks, Trump MS13 Photoshop, US Jet Falls Into Sea & MORE!

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Ryan and Emily discuss Trump bullies Amazon into major cave, US GDP shrinks amid tariffs, MAGA influencers go full cult in WH event, Trump falls for his own MS13 photoshop, US jet falls off ship dodging Houthi strikes, NYC woman attacked by Zionist mob speaks out, African journo says USAID does more harm than good.   Chernoh Bah: https://www.amazon.com/Ebola-Outbreak-West-Africa-Multinationals/dp/0996973923   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here.

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning and welcome to CounterPoints. Emily, how are you doing? I'm good. We've got Sagar on deck, don't we? Yes, we've got a great slate of guests today, slash co-hosts. So we've got Sagar, who's going to join us for about half of the show. After that, we're going to be joined by one of the two victims of the assault in Crown Heights last week. This woman was a random bystander who was just checking out the scene. Somebody started filming her, so she put a kind of scarf over her face, and instantly this crowd

of pro-Israel people was like, oh, she must be anti-Israel because she's got a scarf on her face. And a harrowing scene emerged. This will be her first on-camera interview. Eric Adams has actually asked her to come forward so that he can press charges against the people who were involved with this. And we have new video footage as well. And we have her video footage, which has not been seen before. So you're going to see this mob kind of from her perspective. We're also going to talk to African journalist Cherno Ba. He's going to talk about what's going on in Africa post-USAID. He has been a longtime critic of American interference in Africa and

USAID. So he'll talk about that and a bunch of other things. GDP numbers came out this morning, so we'll talk about that. Last night, Donald Trump did an interview with Terry Moran. Wild interview with Terry Moran. Wild interview with Terry Moran, a rally. He met with Gretchen Whitmer. I think the theme of today's show is the break with reality in a way that we haven't really seen in our politics before. There's just some—it's just getting weird. Didn't really seen in our politics before. There's just some, it's just getting weird. Didn't that happen in like 2015?

Yeah, ish. When you start to hear Donald Trump talking, let's see if, like these aren't even lies. These are just like, hmm, this guy, okay. There are some particularly interesting moments actually in that context. Also the influencer briefings, we're going to do battle over the influencer briefings because I'm outnumbered on this, Ryan and Sagar. I want to tear them apart. And you know what? The White House is bringing in social media influencers and hosting parodies of press events. Yeah. Some of them definitely deserve to be torn apart. So we will get into all of that. Trump also held a rally last night in addition to this interview with Terry Moran. He's celebrating his first 100 days in style, Ryan. So we have sound bites from that. And the Houthis, you're going to give us an update. I'm going to do a wide update on the war in Yemen. A, one of our $70 million fighter jets fell off an aircraft carrier.

We'll talk about that. B, it appears that CENTCOM is now taking targeting information from random OSINT people. Sagar's going to like this one. Random OSINT people on Twitter and just killing innocent people because they're not double-checking the work of these amateurs from Europe and Houston. And along the way, they bombed an African migrant detention center. So far, 68 people have been killed in this strike. They said it was some Houthi base. It was actually a detention center. A quick health update on the Grimm family. We can bring Sagar in here. Yes, yes.

Because Sagar will appreciate this. When there was the overhead cam a couple weeks ago, I noticed I was going bald. And a lot of Breaking Points viewers said, you got to get this HIMSS minoxidil thing. I started doing it. Are you serious? I don't know, Ryan. You got to check your testosterone levels on that one. Oh, really? Yeah, you should watch out.

You should watch out. So my T levels are going to collapse. The other health update, my wife's pathology report came back and no residual cancer. Cancer free. Congratulations. There'll be some radiation and some other things, but real light at the end of the tunnel. And a big relief for all of you. Fuller head of hair, no cancer.

Things are looking up. Life couldn't be better for Ryan right now. I'm so glad to hear it, Ryan. And thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it. Oh, appreciate you being here. We're going to start by talking about the up and down with Amazon. Right.

So Amazon begins the day with reporting in Punchbowl that they're going to start listing the extra price that you're paying based on the tariffs. They end the day without that. And throughout the day, I think, is a lesson in our contemporary politics. But let's roll this first side. So it was reported this morning that Amazon will soon display a little number next to the price of each product that shows how much the Trump tariffs are adding to the cost of each product. So isn't that a perfect crystal clear demonstration that it's the American consumer and not China who is going to have to pay for these policies? I will take this since I just got off the phone with the president about Amazon's announcement. This is a hostile and political act by Amazon. Why didn't Amazon do this when the Biden administration

hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years? And I would also add that it's not a surprise because as Reuters recently wrote, Amazon has partnered with a Chinese propaganda arm. So this is another reason why Americans should buy American. It's another reason why we are on shoring critical supply chains here at home to shore up our own critical supply chain and boost our own manufacturing.

Is Jeff Bezos still a Trump supporter? Look, I will not speak to the president's relationships with Jeff Bezos, but I will tell you that this is certainly a hostile and political action by Amazon. All right. So this allegedly hostile act was first reported by Punchbowl. After that White House interaction, you've moved now to A3. Very quickly, here's Jeff Stein reporting on an Amazon statement that, quote, the team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products. This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented

on any Amazon properties. But wait, there's more. But wait, there is more. Donald Trump has asked about this back and forth. Let's roll Trump. Great. Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly and he did the right thing. And he's a good guy. So it went from Punchbowl to the briefing to Jeff Stein to Donald Trump himself. Sagar, what did you make of that play by play in the that? I think all of that went from like 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. With Amazon stock moving as a result the whole time. Yeah.

I mean, I think my meta takeaway from all of this is just how different and how, frankly, weak this is compared to the Chinese system. I want to remind everyone, whenever we were covering this stuff last week, on the Chinese version of Amazon, they are actually advertising state-subsidized discounts. They're calling them patriotic discounts, saying, hey, Chinese people, if you are patriotic, stand up to the United States, buy Chinese. Here is a discount from the state. We must save our supply chains. Meanwhile, here we are in our country where the price is going up no matter what, except the president and Bezos, one of the richest men in the world and the president of the United States, are basically coming together to make sure that the label is not there to say that this is as a result of the tariffs. I also want to say this as well. The White House

might be trying to do some sort of political layup. In the future, they're going to say, look, Amazon prices have not gone up all that much. That is just categorically not true. The reason why is that while the price may remain the same on Amazon, Amazon is currently engaged in economic warfare against all of its suppliers. I was just reading yesterday. Amazon is demanding in the same way that Walmart, Target, and all the other large retailers are. They are saying to their suppliers, you are eating the margin. We are not touching $1 of this. They have the power of that because of the reliance of those suppliers on their platform. This is the problem. So Amazon,

Target, and Walmart, they are all going to be generally fine. Yes, there may be some little bit of increase in price, but the real crime here is for the small business, let's say, that relies on Amazon, let's say 60 or 70% of volume. I don't know if you guys saw this as a viral image going around of somebody who bought something from Hong Kong where they paid like $2,000 for the product, and their custom duty charge is over the price of the good, right? So $2,500. So just imagine if you're one of these smaller suppliers, e-commerce company, there's so many of these companies out there that rely on Amazon almost entirely. And Amazon is telling them, no, no, no, no, no,

you're eating that. And so Costco, Walmart, Target, and Amazon, the big no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, profitability. And then worse, it can even manifest in empty shelves and less inventory. So we really are the ones who are losing here. And I just want to highlight the difference in these two state strategies. Like on the one hand, you have a state over in China, which is not just real. They don't care about Amazon in their own way, right? Because they control it. Instead, they care about the suppliers that I just talked about. Those are the backbone of the United States economy. And they're the exact people who are not being helped right now by government policy. In fact, they're the ones who are freezing cash flow, have a lot of inventory uncertainty. They're the ones who are not placing, right? They're the ones not placing their orders in this dramatic freight

drop-off from China. And so watching that, I actually, in a lot of ways, it's just like COVID. All the big companies, the Fortune 500, they made off like bandits. Who are the people who went bankrupt? Small business, you have restaurants, employees, contractors, and others. Those are the people that really suffer in something like this. And so that's where I want to zoom out of even just Trump and Amazon. This is about meta high-level strategy and just watch at who's playing the game and who's actually winning that game. And in the war with reality, this is a serious skirmish because think about what the administration is objecting to. If there are increases that are the direct result of the importers having to pay this tariff, they're saying you cannot convey that reality to your consumers.

We will not allow it. Yet, reality exists, and so we can put up A5. So UPS announced that despite having strong profits for the first quarter, it's planning in the future going forward to cut 20,000 jobs. Part of this is these are companies that are always looking to lay off workers for any excuse they can find. But the excuse that they're finding here is that their main client, Amazon, isn't shipping as much stuff. And so while Amazon is, you're right, going to be able to tell its suppliers, we will not be accepting price increases. I've seen some

of those emails that have gone around. It's an amazing thing to read. We will not be accepting price increases. How cool would that be to be able to walk into a store and be like, yeah, I'm sorry. I don't accept price increases. So I'm just going to pay what this used to cost. Despite that power, they're still shipping less stuff because they don't have complete absolute control over everything. And as a result, there's less for UPS drivers to do. And so that's just one of the many, to borrow a Reagan phrase, trickle-down effects that we're going to see from this. The other reality interference is Besant getting asked about where they are with China at this point. So let's roll the Treasury Secretary.

The Chinese continue to say that the U.S. and China are not engaged in any consultation or negotiation on tariffs. You recently said you've talked to your counterpart, but more about traditional things like financial stability. So can you clarify, is the administration talking to Beijing specifically about tariffs or not? Well, we're not going to talk about who's talking to whom, but I think that, you know, over time we will see that the Chinese tariffs are unsustainable for China. I've seen some very large numbers over the past few days that show if these numbers stay on, Chinese could lose 10 million jobs very quickly. And even if there is a drop in the tariffs, that they could lose 5 million jobs.

So remember that we are the deficit country. They sell almost five times more goods to us than we sell to them. So the onus will be on them to take off these tariffs. They're unsustainable for them. And they are saying you guys are not talking about it. So is that true? They have a different form of government. They're playing to a different audience. So I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty, again, of who's talking to whom. But as I said, I believe for the Chinese, these tariffs are unsustainable. And very quickly, two days ago, you said you didn't know if President Trump had spoken to Xi Jinping.

Do you know now? Again, I would say Caroline and I have a lot of jobs around the White House running the switchboard in one of them. Do they still have switchboards? The switchboard. Is this still a thing? That's actually a really good question. Did Xi come through the switchboard? No, God.

I know I meant to ask. Did he talk to Xi? Shoot. I saw him and I forgot to ask. Let's interpret. They're not talking. They're not talking. At any level, it's not happening. Go ahead, Emma. Well, no, that's exactly what I was just going to say. Framing whether they're even talking to China as the quote unquote nitty gritty is completely wild. No nitty, no gritty.

There's nothing nitty or gritty about that question. It's really the question for the entire global economy right now. And they don't have an answer to it, which is why they are framing it as the nitty gritty. Anyone else want to weigh in before we go to Howard Lutnick? I mean, I just think broadly, again, like this is why we've seen such wild market swings is that the administration just is addicted to floating these things, which are just not true. Like anybody with any expertise, China watcher, the Chinese, but, but this, you don't need to speak Chinese. The Chinese foreign ministry hooks that puts out statements in English. We've never talked. We're not talking. We have nothing to discuss. Take the tariffs off. And that's it, by the way,

it's not just China. And this is actually what's concerning me the most. Remember in Japan, Japan was held up as the first trade deal. They came here first. The Japanese prime minister giving a speech in the parliament. We are not going to concede to aggressive U.S. demands. In fact, the current position of the Japanese economic ministry is you must take the tariffs off before we're able to talk. OK, that's the Japanese. Those are the people who we are friends with. The administration is now floating some trade deal with India. You know, what's really funny about that too, is, uh, it reveals how much of this is bullshit because, uh, Scott Besant actually said, actually a trade deal with India is a lot easier because they have lots of tariffs,

but less non-trade barrier, non-tariff barriers. right? And so he's like, we can actually come to some sort of negotiation. But the problem is that the administration does not have any genuine definition that they can even point to of a non-tariff barrier. They're basically like going back through their records and trying to make stuff up. And it comes back to the way that they talked with the Japanese. Remember, the Japanese have a zero, let me reiterate this, a 0% tariff on American cars. It is not because of tariffs. There are a lot of non-tariff barriers. We can talk about that if you want. But then, you know, whenever the Japanese came here and they're like, so what do you want? You guys said this is reciprocal tariffs. And then they're like, well, what are you offering? They're like, I can't even

do, how am I supposed to do business with you? So, I mean, just what I wanted to highlight is that Scott Besson, Howard Lautnick and others are complete and Trump are just completely schizophrenic in their messaging. And then, I mean, broadly, I know you guys have been talking about this is it is going to set in for people very soon. That freight drop 60%, that's showing up. Okay. Sometime in June, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's very, you know that's showing up, okay, sometime in June. You know, it's very, you know, my wife, you know, obviously we're doing with all this baby stuff right now. She's like, hey, should we order that infant car seat? You know, and it's not about the tariffs.

Are we going to be able to get one six months from now? What about diapers? You know, I'm going through researching where the diapers that we're going to buy are made just to make sure. Hey, should I go and stockpile right now? You know, 99%, by the way, of kids' toys. Ryan, as a parent, when do kids need toys? Actually, I'm curious. I mean, you can get the ones that have stuff in their mouth, like, almost immediately, like the little binkies and stuff, like, pretty. Right. Yeah. Guess what? Over 95% of that is made in China, right? You know, 95%. So, you know, hope my kid is a Luddite, you know, just deal with the no toys or maybe they're better off, right? Maybe I should, you know, go back to hand whittling and stuff like that. But this is just my reality. Reusable diapers are good. They've gotten a lot

better and they're probably made in China too. So, you know, better get those out. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Those are also made. Go ahead, Emily. Well, no, I was going to say, to Sager's point, we have a clip of Howard Lutnick. This is Sager's point about how the administration is addicted to floating things out into the public. And maybe it is just the sort of online addling of the American mind where they love seeing the market shoot up. So they say stuff like this on CNBC. But Howard Lutnick sat for a long interview on CNBC yesterday. And we have some clips of that where he's talking. He's pushed on the question of these deals.

Let's take a listen to what he said. If we get a headline that we've signed some deal with China and whatever, you know the markets are going to rip. So, or actually, I should say, would you say that? Well, Treasury Secretary Besson is focused on China. That's his portfolio. He's got to get something done with China. And my portfolio is the rest of the world's trade deals. So they are coming. That's a big portfolio. Oh, it's the greatest thing because we have every country in the world, just like Donald Trump has

said, who wants to do a deal with us. Now, here's the point. I have a deal. Done, done, done, done. But I need to wait for their prime minister and their parliament to give its approval, which I expect shortly. I'm not going to tell you what country. Let the president. It's just you and me here and a couple of million people. Hopefully I let the president decide. So and then there are country after country where we're just working through the details. But you have to remember, they have prime ministers.

They have parliament. They have to work through their process. But all of these are going to be coming. And what they're going to be is they're going to be incredibly smart. And key is, where are you going to find the people to work here? Right? You're north of Phoenix. Where are they coming? That's right. You go to the community colleges and you train people. So all the community colleges around here, Arizona State's on a Grand Canyon. All these community colleges here are training people right now, technicians. And these are really good paying jobs. They started 70s, 80s, $90,000. These are tradecraft. It's time

to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future. You know, this is the new model where you work in these kind of plants for the rest of your life and your kids work here and your grandkids work here. You know, we let the auto plants go overseas, right? Now you should see an auto plant. It's highly automated, but the people, the four, 5,000 people who work there, they are trained to take care of those robotic arms. They're trained to keep the air conditioning system. All right, so who wants to take a guess at what Howard Lutnick's deal that he referenced there is? Because I don't think we know. No, we don't know.

I mean, look, all the current reports are that it's India. And I've even talked about this. Look, the Indians, yeah, they'll offer you some, like, fake tariffs and all these other things. But this is also the inconsistency that drives me crazy. India is one of the most protective developing economies in the entire world. We're talking about Japan, non-trade tariff barriers. That's a joke compared to what India does. I mean, listen, don't ask me. Go and ask anybody who's ever tried to go do business over there. It's true. I mean, listen, no hate. They're doing what they need to do

because they believe in a protective economy. They don't want another country to be able to have any say over its global affairs. I respect that. But let's be serious here and not say that this is not one of the most difficult markets in the entire world for any U.S. company to do business in. That is just obvious. And yet, you know, they're willing to take reciprocal tariffs maybe there, but they're not willing to take it over with Japan. The whole thing is just preposterous. And the level of uncertainty that they've injected now into the small business supply chain and honestly even the pain that they're already – listen, the tariffs go off tomorrow. It doesn't matter.

That's still an entire what, month, maybe quarter of economic growth wiped out like that. And for a small business, I mean, look, I, it's only what, seven to 10%, but I run a small business here with crystal. I mean, can we really go a quarter, uh, with like no money? I don't really know a business that could do that. Uh, you know, or, or if you can, you know, maybe you can make it work. Uh, but that's a, that's a lot of stress. That's, that's a heart attacks. That's, you know, people getting fired, uh, having to ask people to take – can I pay you in 60 days, that type of thing. You don't want to be doing that to your vendor. That has all cascading effects all throughout the economy. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing.

No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case,

bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into,

call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.

My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, and they starting to be like yo your dad's like really the goat like he's a legend so he gets it what does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

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I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. If you think about the blood, sweat, and tears that has gone into so many of these businesses, when you talk about the pain, that's the part that has really been hitting me.

And actually, over at Dropside, I think we've seen a plateauing, you know, even though we're not like importing anything, but just as people I think are, you know, pinching their pennies more because the consumer confidence has completely collapsed. It's so hard to build a small or medium-sized business and people put their entire lives into it. And then their lives depend on it. And through no fault of their own, the rug just being ripped out from under them is just brutal. And sometimes small towns are revolving around these small businesses. And to Howard Lutnick's suggestion that we are bringing all these jobs, blah, blah, blah, this administration has no industrial policy to train these workers, to augment changes in the market, to augment what might happen to small businesses. They actually have nothing.

And so I think it's fairly audacious for Howard Letnick to come out and talk about all of these things that should happen, that are going to happen, while the administration really— Sagar, maybe I've missed something. Are they putting any policy forward that is helping workers and helping communities and helping the economy broadly shift to meet the changes that they're inducing? Well, I mean, I've been off the grid the last couple of days dealing with all this stuff. But unless anything is broken in the last charged a massive surcharge if you do if you import anything abroad, even if you build it here in the United States. And thus, it is incumbent upon you to eat into your margin to invest here in America. OK, I mean, look, we

we could talk numbers, let's say 10 for 10, as in I would take 10% of my margin and you give me a 10% break on taxes. Everybody wins, right? I invest a little bit here. CapEx is super expensive. Ask anybody who's ever built anything in the physical world. And so I don't see one single proposal. In fact, the only civil war that I can see happening right now in Congress for Republicans is whether or not to cut Medicare or Medicaid. That's a whole other discussion. But we're not even talking about tax breaks for people who are small businesses or write-offs or any of this. If anything, actually, as I understand it, they want to take a lot of that away. It's called a 40, it's like 45 X, I think it's a manufacturing tax credit, which was built into the inflation reduction act. They want to get rid of

that. Okay. And that was one of the only things that got, you know, some of these companies to actually build an event. Now, listen, it's fine. You know, the, the objection from the Republicans is like, Oh, that's all this green energy BS. Fine. Expand it for everything. Make it for oil. I don't care. Do whatever. Just make sure that it builds something here in America. If anything, you're like, yeah, you're right. It shouldn't be totally restricted green energy can get it. Everybody can get it fine. If that's what we want to do, but you don't even hear that, right? Cause it's, this is why it's just all, it's, it's just, there's nothing to it beyond the surface level. And on your Medicaid point, Oh no. On your Medicaid point real quickly, Bernie Moreno, the Ohio Republican new freshman Senator just came out and told the house, forget it with your Medicaid cuts. Like those are cuts. You're calling them not cuts. We see them as cuts and we're not doing it. So, you know, the no's always win in Congress. So even that is struggling. Wanted to finish, though, with speaking of reality. Usually we go to...

Which one of you put Chinese propaganda in the rundown? Usually we go to... I honestly didn't know this time. Right. But usually when it comes to the U.S. side, you can disagree or agree with them, but it's more likely to be based in reality. And the Chinese are the ones that are going to give you just flagrant nonsense propaganda. In this case, this is what the Chinese are putting out in English through their Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, basically in response, so trying to buck up the entire world against us,

but also in response to the claims from the United States government that there are some deals, you know, there are conversations happening, getting down to the nitty gritty. So this is a much longer video, but just a little slice of it. Watch this and then ask yourself, is this a video made by a country that is engaged earnestly in negotiations in a good faith way with a partner at the moment. So let's roll this from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The U.S. has stirred up a global tariff storm and deliberately targeted China, playing a 90-day pause game with other nations, forcing them to limit trade with China. This is just like the deadly trap of the eye of the storm.

Bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst. It only deepens the crisis. The US once accused Japan of dumping semiconductors and crushed companies like Toshiba. Later, it forced Japan to sign the Plaza Accord, pushing the economy into decades of anemic growth. The US also used long-arm jurisdiction as a weapon, breaking up France's industrial giant, Austin, robbing the country of a national champion.

History has proven compromise won't earn you mercy. Kneeling only invites more bullying. China won't kneel down. All right, Sagar, so does that sound like a country that's taking Trump's calls right now? Yeah, it's just not. I mean, and you're right. You know, the other final irony here is about TikTok. Like, I again want to highlight that Donald Trump is trying to save TikTok, and the Chinese are like, great. And so they are flooding TikTok with stuff like that and targeting America.

I mean, I warned this would happen. We tried to ban it. You were the one who decided you were a king and that you were just going to subvert, you know, U.S. law and say that I'm not going to ban. And it's like, you know what? I just feel like that scene in The Joker. I'm like, you get what you deserve, man. You have the entire population. You have the entire population, which is getting China-pilled. I personally

really like this guy. We played him here on the show, and he was like, hey, America, here's how many things made in my house from America. He goes, do you have anything made in your house from China? I love this dude. I watch all of his videos because- Wait, bro, you only have a house because of America, though. Yeah, but he actually used to live here. And so he understands us and he'll just constantly be hitting back and someone will be like, hey, what about 1989? And he's like, he goes, you are so imbued with propaganda. And then he'll list off like Kent State and all these other- And I was like, hey, listen, I mean, the guy has a point.

You know, what can I say? He has a point about Kent State. Well, as Trump says, you know, you think we're not killers? Yeah. You think we're. No, what did he say? We think you're so innocent. Yeah.

We think we're so innocent. And there's something just refreshing, I think, about watching that now pervade. Because, look, I mean, I don't even think it should be here but it trump is actively is the person who wants to save it and is now you know paying the price for the very thing that he that he uh that he's now trying to do with respect to tariffs it's just amazing you know i wasn't able to join you guys for the 100 day episode and it's like it's crazy i you know to watch them in the same breath, like this is the most successful hundred days ever. And I have a great FDR 100 day book behind me. And I'm like,

this is a joke compared to, I mean, what a joke. Uh, all we have seen is just, uh, I mean, Doge is a massive, listen, we take their claim. I like to take people's claims and take the, take the subjectivity out of it and just be like, okay, you said you're going to cut $2 trillion. Now it's going to be like $15 billion at best, right? At best in terms of – because they said $150 billion, and of that, actually $135 billion is fake. So $15 billion. Wow. Congratulations.

That's like maybe what? Less than a day of overall federal spending? I feel like I could do that in an hour with the budget. Yeah. Okay. so thanks. Then, what, mass deportation? Nope, numbers are exactly the same as Obama and as Bush.

Instead, you've ignited all of this. Basically, you've opened a massive credibility gap with the whole Enemies and Aliens Act. Trump is out there actually claiming that the MS-13 thing is real. Not a Brigo Garcia's knuckles. That's the level of discourse which we've been subjected to. Signalgate, the ceasefire in Gaza fell apart.

The ceasefire in Ukraine, nothing there is currently happening. I mean, honestly, the only – I would say there are only two A-grades from my perspective. Again, in terms of what they said they were going to do. One is the Iran negotiations, which, as you and I know, very tenuous and that could blow up at any time. And the border crossings, they actually did accomplish that. Beyond that, I mean, I don't know. I would probably give them an F on every single one of the ways that this has been implemented, again, both by its success, its implementation, and then sinking your goodwill with the overall American public. Now, it's Trump. Can he come back? Yeah. Listen, you'd be an idiot at this point to count him out

entirely, but I don't know. I don't really know where things go from here. And Trump seems to not be... Usually, Trump's genius is a tactile feel for where the American public is. He seems to have completely lost it, and he seems to be in a bubble. And we'll talk about that more in this next segment. We'll have ADP jobs report. We'll have GDP numbers. And we've got Trump's interview with Terry Moran. Stick around for that.

Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for that. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was,

my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too, so his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like yo your dad's like really the goat like he's a legend so he gets it what does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my

kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheartartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

GDP and job numbers are out and neither are looking very good. Let's put this first element up on the screen. Economists had expected something around a 0.4% year-over-year increase. Instead, we got a 0.3% drop, the first contraction of the economy since the pandemic. ADP private payroll numbers also came out. They rose at only 62,000 jobs. Dow Jones and others had been expecting more like 150,000 jobs added to the payrolls. So only 62 is being received by the markets as a huge problem. Now, Sagar, the GDP is interesting in the way that it factors in imports. Obviously, the D stands for domestic. And so imports are kind of subtracted out. What you saw in March was this massive surge in purchasing of imports to get

ready for Liberation Day, because Trump said, Liberation Day is coming. So everybody battened down the hatches. And so it's not supposed to count around GDP because it counts and then it gets subtracted back out. But money that you would spend on imports is money that you just by definition don't have to spend on something else. Think about it in terms of a household. If you need to do some landscaping and you need to buy a new refrigerator and all of a sudden you got to buy the fridge, you're not going to do the landscaping or whatever. So some domestic things didn't get done because of the import. So that did play a role.

But what do you make of the first contraction? And this is March. So we're talking about ending March 31st. So these numbers do not count April. Liberation Day was actually April 1st. April 2nd because they didn't want it to be April Fool's Day. That's right. I want people to not pay attention to the top number and instead look at the trend. So the overall trend is that, yes, it was because of good imports, but it was consumption slowed to just 1.8 percent, down from 4 percent at the end

of 2024. So that shows almost a, what is that? A hundred percent reduction in consumption that happened in just a three month period. That's devastating, you know, to a lot of businesses and a quote, final sales to domestic purchasers came in at just 2.3% down from about 3% at the age of 2024. Those two things are what matter. I think even more than the import craziness, because this is from Heather Long. If you set aside the import craziness, the economy slowed in the Trump early days, but it didn't collapse. That said, the risk of recession is now real with the hefty tariff. So for me, the decline in consumption is the number one story. It fits with the consumer confidence index falling to 2022. And it also just shows us what a contraction can look like, because if you have

high import duties, low consumption, mass layoffs, or at least some sort of layoffs, you have high, you know, unemployment or higher unemployment, and interest rates have to remain high, because technically inflation will still remain at least, you know, baseline of kind of where it is right now, you're going to have a stagflation type scenario, which is externally affected. And I actually don't even think it fits that neatly into a box. The consumption figure screams volumes because that is uncertainty. That's you, that's me, that's Ryan, Emily, and all of us where even subconsciously, right before we're about to make a purchase do i really need

this right now should i just be putting this in the bank let me tell you should i keep that keep doing this women oh really just buying it yeah i mean i honestly i noticed i didn't include my wife and i was yeah women be shopping women all right uh yeah anyways um the point is is that as that manifests across the economy you see see the UPS style stuff. You see a few of the plants and these other things, layoffs begin to happen. Consumer retail is going to start to get slowly dragged down. And that is when you see things – I always think about gift shops, candle shops in a nice tourist area. You're dead.

If you see a 20% reduction in overall visitors and the people who are visiting are on a tighter budget, you're done. And your inventory costs twice as much. Yeah, your inventory costs twice as much. If you're in upstate New York or in Washington and you're heavily reliant on Canadians, you're dead. Are you guys seeing this stuff out of Vegas about how Vegas is devastating right now? Absolutely devastated. Their occupancy rate is apparently low. I just saw Nate Silver. He was like, oh, I'm booking my rooms for the WSOP that's coming up.

And it's some of the lowest rates that I've ever seen. A lot of it is from international travel and also just broad consumption. And the tourism point is a key one because the biggest bright spot in the jobs report was in leisure and hospitality. So that's March. We know for a fact that in April, the biggest bright spot turned very dark. It is getting quite ugly. And we can put up this chart, which I believe is B2, which goes exactly to Sager's point. This is the Consumer Confidence Index. Obviously, sometimes there are material reasons for the number going from straight downward towards the floor. If you look at 2007, 8, 9, we know why it crashed back then. We look at 2020, we know why it crashed then. That's the pandemic. This one is completely

driven by decisions just made for effectively very little reason by Donald Trump. He's decided to do this thing. And as a result, you see this number just spiking down to the floor. And when the consumer economy makes up so much of our economic capacity and you have people pulling back, that has a ripple effect that's going to be felt throughout the economy. Futures are sliding. Dow is down about 300, 350 points since the news came out. And I would think that who knows how the market's going to handle it. But you would think that Trump's interview last night as well would not inspire much confidence in the markets. Let's play just this one thought, B3 from Terry Moran

and Donald Trump last night. We basically have an embargo on China. Look, you're trying to say something's going to happen, Terry. No, no, no. OK, well, you know business. I want to ask you. I do know business. So 145 percent tariffs on China.

And that is basically an embargo. They deserve it. It'll raise prices on everything from electronics to clothing to building houses. You don't know that. You don't know whether or not China is gonna eat it. That's mathematics. China probably will eat those tariffs. But at 145, they basically can't do much business with the United States. And they were making from us a trillion dollars a year. They were ripping us off like nobody's ever ripped us off. And by the way, we have other countries that were just as bad. If you look at the European Union, it was terrible what they've done to us.

Every country, almost every country in the world was ripping us off. They're not doing that anymore. I want you to think. Does that inspire any confidence? Well, yeah, you're right, Ryan. I mean, it's one of those where really what you're watching. I mean, what Trump also says is he'll be like, oh, we're having all these jobs come back and they're telling me it's amazing. It's like there's not what that's just not true you literally listen to the ceo walmart target they're like we told him it would be devastating that's what they said empirical about i mean you know the other really gross part about all this is how the auto manufacturers are basically just shaking trump down for exemptions which he announced in michigan

and it's like okay so what are we doing here exactly so we don't have for exemptions, which he announced in Michigan. And it's like, okay, so what are we doing here exactly? So we don't have exemptions or actually we do. And by the way, the tariffs are also going to apply to Toyota if they build in America. So why would Toyota continue to build in America? Can anyone riddle me that one? If you're Toyota, I just want to like screw it.. You know, I'm done. Why would I even want to keep doing business here? It just, it does, it's preposterous and it doesn't really make a whole bunch of sense. And broadly that continues to shine through in Trump's interview. I mean, look in a certain way, like you get, you really get exactly what he should, like what he is on the screen is exactly how he is i can testify to that

you know on a personal level having met him a couple or interviewed him a couple of times and so anybody who's thinking like it's a performance or whatever it's like his life is a performance that's how he actually is in all of these meetings so we'll see the one that scared me was when he said that tourism is way up yeah right right it's just delusional. And Terry Moran's like, I'm sorry, what? Up? No, it's not up. It's way down. Like, these are not differences of opinion here. Like, either Las Vegas is a ghost town or it's not.

Yeah. And payroll growth. Yeah, Ryan, he should ask Steve Witkoff, the Las Vegas developer. Well, Trump's got his own property in Vegas. That's true, yeah. Check the Trump numbers in Vegas. Actually, honestly, someone should go and track where the room rates at the Trump International in Vegas and see how they have trended from November all the way until today. That'd be a good like chat GPT task or something.

I mean, look, I could be wrong only because it is Trump and there's a lot of MAGA boomers out there who will pay a premium just to stay at a Trump property. But, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if they're not completely insulated from any sort of economic downturn. Yeah. So ADP, their report showed private payroll growth slowed in April to 62,000. The Dow estimate for that was 120,000. So another negative indicator. But if you're worried about all of this, I have good news. We can roll the final thought. Chuck Schumer is on the case. Let's play B4. Of all the crazy things the Republicans want to do, now they want a car tax?

Hell no. Hell no. Not happening. Hell no. I'm inspired. I'm personally inspired. I feel good. We're done.

Our job here is done. Let's move on to the influencers. Let's talk about the influencers. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder

of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into,

call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and we need to talk. It's tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices,

and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Yeah. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand

what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me.

Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Well, the White House started its influencer briefings this week. I think we're two influencer briefings in.

There have been—there was one on Monday, one on Tuesday. We'll see where they go going forward. Now, there are some moments from these briefings that are going massively viral because they are cringe-inducing, painful, and nobody is wrong to cringe at them. My very unpopular take is that the moments that aren't going viral have actually not been that bad. So before I make my very unpopular argument and do battle with Ryan and Sager. Let's roll. I don't even want to do it. Let's roll this clip, C1, of the influencer briefing at the White House with Caroline Leavitt. Over the first 100 days, the majority of policies that we've seen from the Trump administration have been either targeted at foreign affairs, such as bringing the American hostages home

or attempting to end the war between Ukraine and Russia, or on long-term goals such as cutting government spending with Doge. What policies can we expect to see rolled out over the next few months that Americans will directly feel the effects of in order to secure the 2026 midterms for the Republican Party and keep his approval rating historically high? The first in the first hundred days is that the White House is crawling with kids. You have a young, beautiful baby boy. There are babies everywhere. There's so many young folks on staff who have kids. You have a young, beautiful baby boy. There are babies everywhere. There's so many young folks on staff who have kids. But the last four years under Joe Biden, parents were really stressed

and ravaged. They had to take on two or three extra jobs. Depression rates were up. Suicide rates were up. You're a very high profile young mother who seems to juggle and balance it all beautifully. What advice do you have to young parents out there who are starting their careers, having kids, building families, and trying to find that balance so desperately? Yeah. Well, it's a great question. And first, to the heart of your premise, it's true. The president has empowered not just me as a young mother in this role, but there are so many new moms and dads on our senior staff in the West Wing, but also across the entire administration. Can't forget the dads. There's one from the first briefing on Monday that we're going to roll. We've got some more information on this influencer.

Let's go ahead and play C2 here. Thank you for having us here. I've noticed, this is kind of like a repeat of 2016, the legacy media has gone back to not reporting anything on President Trump. In the beginning, we had them reporting everything that he was doing. Now they're kind of going back again to not reporting everything that he is actually doing. I'm kind of the nerd when it comes to reporting. I'm not the headline news girl. I'm the nuts and bolts. I'm the policy type nerd.

So what direction do you advise kind of me to go into um like the white house files that y'all send out every single day because that's what people are used to when they want to ask me questions they want to know kind of like the nuts and bolts of everything okay guys go ahead and react where do we want to start that reminds me of uh brian stelter uh asking jen saki what can we as the media do better yeah and uh was ridiculed then. It should be ridiculed now. And look, I think brought an Emily. This is the thing. I'm not objecting to everybody in the briefing room. I am friends with a lot of a lot of those people. I mean, my man Pomp was there sitting in the background. But my point is not about that. It's actually a philosophical thing where the White House is just here's my main message to a lot of these influencers. You are at ABC News for an Oval Office sit down.

Yeah, they'll invite you to your city little briefing so you can glaze them about babies or whatever is going on. They don't respect you at all. So even though Trump will sit there and be like, wow, what a great question. Trump understands the optics are humiliating to actually sit down with somebody like you. And the White House does too. You're a pawn. You're a joke. You're somebody there just to take up space and to piss off the media. Now, if you want to actually do your job, you should ask them questions which are critical. And Ryan, I mean, I really think it's important for you to be able to talk about this because you were once in a similar position in the Huffington Post. And what the Huffington Post expertly did under Barack Obama is they challenged Barack Obama from the left. And so the mission of conservative media should not be to glaze the Trump administration. It should be to challenge

the Trump administration to say, why haven't you done these things that you promised on the campaign trail? Why are you allowing this? Why are you not doing it? You should find internal contradictions. And I'm telling you, this is the way that I operated in the White House. And hey, what do I know? I only got to interview the president four times in the Oval Office. The reason why I did it is not because I glazed them. In fact, I'll just reveal it public privately they would all say yeah we can't give this to uh so you know whoever is a is a like is glazing us because we would look stupid they're like when we bring you in you're actually going to ask them critical questions they in us they don't want the critical question but they understand that that's part of the back and forth so So, Ryan, I think you should really go off on this a little bit because you from the right. And actually, Sean Spicer,

of all people, asked Caroline Leavitt why Donald Trump is sitting down with Jeffrey Goldberg and other people in the corporate press, which I meant to post this, but I do a lot of helping. I was watching that and I was like, is that Sean Spicer? What the hell is he doing in there? But this is the thing. I don't know how many young conservative journalists I've said exactly what you just said, Sagar, to. And I was meant to send that from Sean Spicer and be like, he actually understands this. This is the only way that you get respect is asking serious questions. So there were questions about Trump's promise for national reciprocity for gun owners, a great example of something that nobody in the mainstream media would ask about, holding

into account for a promise from the right that nobody in the corporate press would ask about. Very legitimate question, newsy question. When will the border wall be built? Another great question. That one didn't go viral. There was a question, this was from DC Drano, about the timeline on the Epstein files. There was a question about reorganizations of the IRS. There were some genuinely decent questions that didn't

go viral. Now, to everyone's point, I just want to say I agree that those viral moments speak to something really rotten in conservative media, MAGA media. And I'm also very curious to hear Ryan's thoughts on this, because he actually did exactly what you said, Sagar, which is the right way to approach this job, not just for being more successful, but also just doing your damn job and respecting your viewers and your audience. So Ryan, tell us. Yeah, yeah. Sagar has this exactly right, that if you are a journalist with a perspective, whether you guys on the right, me on the left, it's actually easier to do your job when there's a center left. If you're a left-wing journalist

and there's a center left president in power, attacking them from the left is kind of a lot easier to do real interesting work than it is when there's a right-wing president, because it's not interesting that like the Huffington Post thinks that Donald Trump is wrong about X, Y, and Z, because they also think he's wrong about A, B, C, D, E, F, G, everything. But when it comes to somebody that you're a little bit closer with, you're able to earnestly say, hey, you ran on breaking up the big banks. And now we're hearing that Larry Summers is saying you can't break up the big banks. You ran on making sure that there is a public option for people who can't afford insurance. We hear that you're talking to Big Pharma about making sure that that's not even

in the bill. And finding the gap between what they ran on and what they're actually doing is where the good journalism is. You drive that wedge in there. And you can do it more effectively if you actually care. And it's your value, right? Because you're filling blind spots. That's why, actually, the National reciprocity for gun owners question was, I thought, such a good illustration. This is your value in the briefing room, is that you are bringing a perspective that is underrepresented in the media despite being represented more evenly throughout the rest of the population. Trump voters care about the promise he made on gun reciprocity. They care about the border wall, but their questions aren't represented in the briefing room. So it's not only a value add

for you to be tough on some of these questions from the right. It also will be more successful. So if you want to be successful, you're being stupid by being a lapdog. Yeah, and that's the thing they just don't understand. And again, Trump understands this. That's why he, have the space or the trust with their audience to be able to challenge Trump. And so they find it existentially dangerous. I mean, I think it would be fascinating to watch any of these like former free speech warriors go in there and ask about the Palestine thing, right? Because that would throw them off their game too. They have, they, here's the other thing too, that people need to understand. It's also about mindset. So the mindset of a white house press secretary, when they walk into a normal briefing room, it's war, it's literal warfare. They're prepared. They're ready to do battle. But when she's walking in

there, let me guarantee you, she's not doing the level of preparation that they are whenever they go into the briefing room. That's when things get interesting. That's when things are very interesting when you can hear what they actually think. I remember once in the first Trump administration, there was this great reporter. I think his name was Olivier Knox. I forget who he worked for at the time. And he was in a back and forth with Spicer and Yahoo. And,icer. And he was just like, hey, what does victory look like in Afghanistan? Spicer was like, stable. And I was like, oh, interesting. He didn't even know.

I was like, what a great question, right? Because it was so fascinating because he hadn't prepared for it at all. And he hit him with something. And he actually had to think on the spot. It might be one of the few honest moments of his entire career. That's actually one of the best things that you could get. I mean, Ryan, you can talk about this too. Didn't Obama call you guys out specifically in like his first press conference in 09? And he's like, I could cure cancer. And the Huffington Post would say, you know, I didn't do enough.

It was even better. He said, he said, if I were, if the Huffington Post were covering Abraham Lincoln when he did the Emancipation Proclamation, they would have highlighted the fact that it didn't apply to a few counties in West Virginia and to other counties under Confederate control. Which is a good thing to point out. That's actually fair and true. That is what the Liberator and those people said, just so we're aware, Mr. President. Yes. And we actually then wrote that article just for him. Because all of the like radical Republican papers at the time said the same thing. Why are you so late on this? And why doesn't this cover everybody? And that's the role of that press. So it's like, yes. And yeah, he would call us out. He would call us out pretty regularly. And we ate it up. And my favorite time was when the New York Times editorialized against Larry Summers for Fed chair. But we had been just absolutely hammering him at the Huffington Post. You were very pro Larry Summers for Fed chair. And he did not get it.

And in a private meeting with Democrats, Obama complained about us and Larry Summers and not the New York Times because the New York Times editorial page wasn't moving the needle. See, that's very interesting. Right. That was what was getting under his craw. That's the lesson. See, and that's power. And look, I mean, none of these people listen. To your point, these influencers think that they're going to get access by asking these glazing questions, when in fact, as you found with Trump, it's being adversarial and building your own authority that then forces them to answer your questions. And otherwise, they're totally embarrassed. So it was the power that we built that forced them. They didn't love us, hated us, hated us more than they hated The Daily Caller, probably, because they're like, oh, The Daily

Caller, of course, they're going to beat us up. But God, The Huffington Post. They don't listen. And I know, Emily, like you said, I like, oh, Caller, of course they're going to beat us up, but God, the Huffington Post. They don't listen. And I know, Emily, like you said, I have been on the phone with half of these people. They don't listen. They're taking their advice from social media, and I think not only is it going to age poorly, like, remember all of the stars of

2017 in the briefing room? April Ryan, Jim Acosta. How did it work out? I mean, these people are jokes. We remember it as a joke. So yeah, they got rich for a year or two. Jim Acosta literally got fired from CNN because he's humiliating.

As part of his brand, nobody looks back on his whole fight, resist, what was the whole grabbing the microphone away from the intern? It was just like, it literally is like mass psychosis right uh that that was even considered acceptable i think that's how most of these maga media people are going to look uh they won't age and you know look i mean will they get away with it yeah they definitely will i mean i've been watching to see the reception they get on on social media i I think it's insane. Honestly, I don't really understand it.

Well, that's the point that I want to make. I think the distinction between influencers and journalism is quite interesting as well, because to the point you were making about whether this is audience capture, that's really interesting because I think with some of these influencers, it's not even audience capture. It's that they want this access that's not about getting journalism, right? Because they're not journalists. So they're not trying to, like, break stories and move the ball forward. What they want is more access for socials. And that's a very different set of incentives.

You know, they want to be able to go with, like, Kai Trump and Don Jr. And, like, be behind the scenes at all of these events because that's just sort of where their bread is buttered right now. They can get maybe sponsorships with it and it's a different, I agree that it's a different set of incentives than breaking news and obviously those incentives have crept into journalism itself too. But if you don't even think of yourself as a journalist, it's true that you have important big audiences.

So there's theoretically a case for these influencer briefings, but they're not going to be the same as the White House press briefing. Nevertheless, if you have serious questions, then you should ask the serious questions because it will be better off. You will actually be respected. Your audience will be interested in it because they are following you in that they think you are one of their, like they're a fellow conservative. So they're probably have the same questions that you do about when the border wall is supposed to be done despite all of the promises. So I mean, it's obviously, yes, it's silly. I hope some of these good questions keep getting asked,

even if they're not going viral, because this really ties a bow on everything we've just talked about. You don't go viral for asking a good question about gun rights. Sometimes you do, though. Yeah, you can. Actually, sometimes you do. Yeah, that's what these other people don't get. It's like if you want real fame or, like, success or any of this stuff, you can get it by doing kind of what you're trying to do,

but it's just – It's harder. Whatever. It's much harder. It takes a level of intellectualism and history and of knowledge to get there. But they've chosen their path. And I mean, I think they just look like a joke. And that four years from now, they're not going to be able to even have a career.

And from that point forward, you got to ask existential questions. Because look, all the warning signs were there. And they're just feeding into this mass hysteria at the moment. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes. Yeah, guys, so stop embarrassing yourselves. Let's move on now to Donald Trump's rally last night. By the way, guys, thank you very much for dealing with my absences. There's a couple of just personal medical things going on, but everything is fine for right now.

And we are anxiously awaiting our baby. The kid is already a pain in the ass. He's not even born. He or she has not even been born yet. And so I'm sure that will manifest in their personality going forward. But just in case this might be the very last time that you guys see me before labor and, you know, I'll take a few weeks off and all of that. So just thank you very much for bearing with me. I really appreciate you all. And back to Ryan and Emily. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing.

No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her.

And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's daughter.

She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in.

I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it.

What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. President Trump went to Michigan yesterday,

had a little encounter with Gretchen Whitmer, but he was doing a rally on the occasion of his 100th day in office. And the crowd was sort of a typical Trump rally crowd, but given what's happened over the course of the first 100 days, there was one particularly interesting moment. We have a couple that we're going to run, but let's play this first clip after Donald Trump showed video of the alleged MS-13 members heading to El Salvador, ending up at Seacott. This is what happened. And the worst of the worst are being sent to a no-nonsense prison in El Salvador. Why don't you watch? Watch this. Watch this. Take a look. So there were USA, USA chants. Now Donald Trump also floated.

Well, he first said that he was going to serve two terms. Here's what happened after that. Let's roll this clip. It was so important to win because they used to say the fake news, to be a great president, you have to serve two terms. So now we're going to serve two terms. Now they've taken that one. Of course. Right? Right, Dr. Oz? So now we're going to serve two terms. Now they've taken that one. Cross.

Right? Right, Dr. Oz? Cross that one off. Cross that one off. No, they say it all the time. When I was out, they say, well, they go out. It's like a fever dream when he says, right, Dr. Oz? Right, Dr. Oz.

What's happening? But the crowd was chanting three, if you couldn't hear that. And then Trump says, write Dr. Oz. Write Dr. Oz. What's happening? But the crowd was chanting three, if you couldn't hear that. And then Trump said, thank you. We actually already served three. Then one more clip. This one is- Because he was elected in 2020. Is that what he means? I think that's what he means. It's genuinely hard to say. This is his part of his interview. So the rally's happening. He's also sitting down for an interview with Terry Moran on ABC, again, to mark the 100th day of the administration. Let's roll this clip, D3. But the court has ordered you to facilitate that. I'm not the one making this decision. We have lawyers that don't want to do this.

But the buck stops in this office. No, no, no, no. I follow the law. You want me to follow the law? If I were the president that just wanted to do anything, I'd probably keep him right where he is. The Supreme Court says what the law is. Listen, I was elected to take care of a problem that was, it was a unforced error that was made by a very incompetent man. A man that turned out to be incompetent that you always said was wonderful, great genius,

right? And now you find out all of the media now they're saying what a mistake they made. A man who was grossly incompetent allowed us to have open borders where millions of people float in. I campaigned on that issue. I wouldn't say it was my number one issue, but it was pretty close. I campaigned on that issue. I've done an amazing job.

I have closed borders. He said you couldn't do it. You wouldn't be able to do it. It would never happen. Well, it happened. And it happened very quickly. Wait a minute. When we have criminals, murderers, criminals in this country, we have to get them out and

we're doing it. By law. And you'll pick out one man, but even the man that you picked out, he said he wasn't a member of a gang. And then they looked and on his knuckles, he had MS-13. There's a dispute over that. Wait a minute. He had MS-13 on his knuckles. He had some tattoos that are interpreted that way. But let's move on. Wait a minute. Hey, Terry, Terry, Terry. He did not have the letter MS-13.

It says MS-13. That was Photoshopped. So let me just- That was Photoshopped, Terry. You can't do that. Hey, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime. You're doing the interview. I picked you because frankly, I never heard of you, but that's okay. I picked you, Terry, but you're not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattooed- We'll agree to disagree.

I wanna move on to something else. Terry, do you want me to show you the picture? I saw the picture. We'll agree to disagree. And you think it was Photoshopped? Here we go, here we go. to show you the picture? I saw the picture. Well, here we go. Here we go. Photoshop it. Go look at his hand. He did have tattoos that can be interpreted that way. I'm not an expert on them. I want to turn to Ukraine. I want to get to Ukraine. No, no, no, no, no. He had M.S. as clear as you can be not interpreted. This is why people no longer believe. Well because it's fake news. In El Salvador, they aren't there.

But let's just go. They aren't there when he's in El Salvador. They weren't there, but they're there now, right? No, but they're there now. They're in your picture. Terry. Ukraine, sir. He's got MS-13 on his knuckles.

All right. Okay? We'll take a look. It's such a disservice. We'll take a look at that, sir. Why don't you just say it? Yes, he does. So Donald Trump clearly believes that he deported someone with MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles.

The letters MS and then the numbers 13 tattooed on his knuckles. That would be Kilmore Abrego Garcia, who does have tattoos that experts, some have said, resemble what gang members might have. But to be very clear, Trump thinks it's said MS-13 on his knuckles. What actually happened is that the White House put MS, they photoshopped, they actually did, to Terry Moran's point, photoshop MS-13 onto a picture of Kilmer Abrego Garcia's knuckles to sort of demonstrate. They enhanced a picture of his knuckles so that the tattoos were more clearly visible and then put MS-13 on it. And there was debate when the White House released that photo as to whether they wanted people to believe it

was photoshopped or wanted people to believe that MS-13 actually had been tattooed on his knuckles. Donald Trump seems to have been duped. Maybe he was the target of this hoax. Seriously, because there was this actually somewhat interesting debate when that happened last week about whether or not people would actually believe the Photoshop or that it was very clearly indicating that they were just enhancing the picture. I was actually in the camp that was like, oh, this is so obviously Photoshopped that what they're trying to do is just make it

a graphic that indicates the tattoos are MS-13, not that this is, like, because they were like stenciled letters. Like, you know, it just, it didn't look real. But I guess if you're a, sorry boomers, but I guess if you're a social media boomer. Without your bifocals. He was duped by the Photoshop and genuinely believes that Kilmer, Abrego, Garcia, all of this uproar, I mean, that changes the story significantly that Donald Trump believes the man has MS-13 tattooed on him because that's a confirmation, clear as day, that he is MS-13, meaning the Democrats that are fighting to keep him, the media that is fighting to keep him is coming from a very different place. Right. From Trump's addled perspective, he literally thinks that Abrego Garcia has MS-13 tattooed on his fingers. And then he's like,

God, what is wrong with these Democrats and the media that are fighting over this guy who has MS-13. And even some Republicans, by the way, who are unhappy with the decision. Right. 25th Amendment time. Like, whoever is the marshal of the Supreme Court, like from this first term who never showed up to arrest Trump, like 25th Amendment, man, like this is, this man is utterly delusional. Am I wrong that that picture was very obvious? It was obvious. Because I can see how some sort of person. But that's if you can see it. I think maybe his eyes aren't good enough. And Stephen Miller just lied to him. I mean, it's crazy. And somebody's lying to him. And we'll talk about this at the end of this clip with his answer on tourism.

He's watching television and reading some things. so he has some access to outside information. But clearly his circle of advisors are either afraid of him and or are just outright lying to him to cynically manipulate him. Stephen Miller is the one with the most access to him as deputy chief of staff who would have a vested interest in lying about whether or not he has MS-13 tattooed on his hand. And also, the whole thing falls apart. He has a marijuana leaf and then a smile. You're like, okay. Even in Spanish, there's an MS there. Then there's a cross, which is like, okay, that's not a one. That's a cross. And then there's a skull. And that's where it's like, where do you get a three out of a skull? And people are like, well, you can draw a three somewhere onto the skull.

Okay, now you're just in fantasy land. It's like, you know, smoking weed makes me happy. Love the Lord till I die. That's a thing that's out there. That actually makes a little bit of sense., that actually makes a little bit of sense. Yeah, it makes a little bit of sense, but I'm not ruling out that it's gang tattoos either. Also, MS-13, if you've seen, go Google image MS-13 tattoos. They say MS-13 on their face or on their back.

In like, yeah, they're usually in like old timing. Old script, but it's clear. It's clear. You'd be thrown out of the gang. Like, hey, you're supposed to tattoo MS-13 on yourself, Kilmar. And he's like, oh, yeah, I did this. It's really fancy. See how the M, the S, and then this is sort of like a one, and this is a skull.

He'd be like, you're afraid to announce your support, your membership in MS-13, so you're out. Like, that's not how it works. Anyway. Not that it matters because it was so obvious. None of this matters. This was you're out. That's not how it works. Anyway. Not that it matters because it was so obvious. None of this matters. This was photoshopped. He's wrong. It was very obvious.

It was like a serif font. It didn't look like it was natural on the skin like a tattoo. It was put onto the image in a way that is just mind-blowing. You would interpret that as someone's actual MS-13 tattoo. I'm not ready to rule out what's on Kilmer Arbrego Garcia's knuckles as being potentially gang-related, but that's at this point beside the point because Donald Trump thinks that an obvious Photoshop is real. He clearly thinks that it's real. Did you get the sense that he was lying to

Terry Moran's face? I didn't. I think he genuinely believes it. No, and he seemed to be really frustrated at Terry Moran. His ability to take in information seems gone. And at the end, he says, why won't you just say to me, yes, he has MS-13 on his knuckles? Which is clearly, that's what he wants his sycophants around him to say. Just tell me yes. Let's skip ahead to D5. This is going to be the thought about tourism, because I think that is actually an interesting theme from

some of the clips that we played. So the MS-13 clip, but also the two versus three terms clip. Let's roll tourism as way up D5. And Canadians, many of them are really angry, furious about your talk about we're going to take over Canada, it's going to become the 51st state. And it kind of is of a piece, a lot of travel is down into the United States from around the world. It feels like there's been reputational damage. The country's doing great.

Well, prices are down. Not the tourism. Gasoline's down, energy's down. Tourism is going to be way up. Wait till you see the numbers. The tourism is way up. Not now. Now Canada, oh shit, tourism's doing very well.

We're doing very well. We're doing very well. Wait till you see the real numbers come out in about, in six months from now, wait till you see the numbers. But do you think, I'm going to ask you. So he's saying two things there. On the one hand, that numbers are fine now. On the other, that the numbers will go up. Wait till you see the numbers. Well, so this is according

to CNBC, foreign visitors to the U.S. by air fell nearly 10% in March from the same month a year earlier and nearly 13% from before the pandemic to 4.54 million people. That's where this information we have as of right now. Yeah, that's March. Wait that's where this information that we have as of right now. Yeah. That's March. Wait till you see April. Yeah. So. Well, according to Trump, wait till you see April. Like who's lying to him? Like, I don't, I don't like Trump's judgment in general, but I would like his judgment to be acted upon reality. Like I want him to have accurate information. And then, and then I disagree with or agree with what he's doing. I'd rather his advisors tell him, Hey man, tourism's way down. Uh, do you, do we care? Or is this all part of the plan? Rather than this, Hey boss, everything's great. Tourism is up. Uh, she's on the phone, MS-13 is tattooed on his fingers,

like you're killing it, boss. Everybody loves you. CNBC also says including land border crossings. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, and we're going to get the Fox News pollster fired. That's what Stephen Miller said yesterday. Yeah, he said that. I actually think that there are probably some legitimate questions about the accuracy of the Fox News polls. They're in line with everybody else's polls. But right now they are. Yeah. If you look at all the polling aggregations, yes. So including land border crossings, CNBC says inbound visitors to the U.S. fell 14 percent in March from last year, according to the U.S. Travel Association.

So an industry. That's down. Trade group. Yeah, that's very obviously down. Now, this clip, I want to say, Ryan, I think that sounded to me possibly just like regular Trump talking his way into success. I hope. He's fluctuating between they're fine now, but they're going to be fine. It just was, I felt like that was just Trump kind of bullshitting. The MS-13 one is the one that really concerns me.

Also, I don't know what he was talking about when he said two terms and then he said three terms. I guess it's possibly 2020, but he said we already served three terms. So it's all, they, it's very. He's a time traveler. There's, I've never been on the. You have this very like traditional understanding of time. Yes. Whereas he moves about it freely.

He's sort of on a higher plane. But no, I've never been on the bandwagon ever, like up until this point of people who thought that Trump had some type of medical, mental aging condition. That was something the Biden team tried to push. There's obviously something going on up there. Whether or not it's aging, I've never been on that bandwagon, to be honest. But the MS-13 one, now that one has me really questioning his capacity. That could just be idiocy and bad advisors. Or lying. Someone lied to him. To your point, I guess it is possible that somebody lied to him.

Now, to put that in stark relief, let's take a look at what Donald Trump said about negotiations with Vladimir Putin. Just for a reminder that the man who believes MS-13 was tattooed on Kimo Obrego's hand is negotiating the end of a potential or of a war involving a nuclear power. So go ahead and roll D4. He's willing to stop the fighting. Don't forget. You think he wants peace? You think Vladimir Putin wants peace? I think he does, yes.

I think he does. I think because of me. Even with the raining missiles on? I think he really, his dream was to take over the whole country. I think because of me, he's not going to do that. Do you trust him? I don't trust you.

I don't trust a lot of people. I don't trust you. Look at you. You come in all shooting for bear. You're so happy to do the interview. And then you start hitting me with fake questions. You start telling me that a guy whose hand is covered with a tattoo doesn't have the tattoo. I mean, you're being dishonest.

No, I'm not. No, I am not. Do I trust? I don't trust a lot of people. But I do think this. I think that he let's say he respects me and I believe because of me, he's not going to take over the whole. But his decision, his choice would be to take over all of Ukraine.

Okay. Again, there's a charitable reading of this where he's said this before. He's not going to talk, and Witkoff has said this, he's not going to talk trash about Putin in a way that would hamper his ability just to kind of virtue signal to American neocons in a way that would hamper the actual peace process. So on that part, I get not taking Terry Moran's bait. On the other hand, Ryan, he's still going back to the MS-13 tattoo. So he's like, yeah, I can't trust you because you think that wasn't photoshopped. Yeah. Or you think that wasn't Photoshopped. Yeah. Or you think that was Photoshopped. Wow. Things are fine.

We're 100 days in. Everything is proceeding apace. Everyone's happy. Tourism is up. Feels like a lifetime. Good Lord. Yeah. Anything else on the Terry Moran rally?

No, just 25th Amendment. And look, I was for it with Biden. So you can't get me on that hypocrisy. So I'm for it now. President Vance, get ready. Lace up. Lace up. All right. Let's move on to the Houthis, Ryan, because another quite an interesting L for the good old U.S. of A here. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend.

I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking.

Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, cause I bring him on tour with me and he's

getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. He's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good.

Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. We can put this first element up on the screen. An F-A-18 fighter jet fell off the side of. They claim that the aircraft carrier was making a sharp movement to avoid Houthi fire. Now, we know from Houthi officials that they did indeed say that they launched a drone and missile attack on the Truman carrier group. And I spoke to somebody who served on an aircraft carrier, and he said, yeah, those things, I think 30 knots, they get moving at a serious clip. And when they start to, I don't know if you can totally come about in an aircraft carrier, but when they start to turn, they do bank, and you have to have everything kind of secured. According to the Navy, they were hauling this thing out of the hangar, a hangar at the time, when it started to bank, because I guess they weren't planning on banking. Now, these are super fast missiles. So it's kind of, I'm a little skeptical that even the fastest

aircraft carrier can move fast enough to get it out of the way of a missile. Who knows? What do I know? All we know is that this $70 million fighter jet is now at the bottom of the Red Sea. Yeah. Yeah. So we don't have health care. Yeah.

But we do have. We do have a sunken fighter jet. It raises a lot of questions. Do we have fighter jet insurance? And were we current on it? Yes, that is one of the questions that comes to mind. Was it paid off? Called flow from progressive. What if we had just finished paying this thing off when it rolled off the side? The Allstate guys should start doing commercials, finding the piece. And Allstate guy should start doing commercials fighting the piece. And you know that's how it goes

when you have a $70 million fighter jet. The second you make your last payment, it rolls off the side of the aircraft carrier. Many such cases. Just for fun, let's put up E2 here. This is the War Powers Resolution. It is not actually okay, constitutionally,

for this carrier group to even be in these waters. According to the Constitution, the Congress is vested with the power to declare war. According to the War Powers Act, you cannot enter

into hostilities. It sounds so corny to say, according to the War Powers Act, you cannot enter into hostilities. It sounds so corny to say, look, we're into the War Powers. You can't do this. We are so beyond that. You can't do this. I'm just saying you can't do this. Oh, 100%. So, they are entered into hostilities right now. They are in a place where they know they're going to get shot at. And if they don't want to get shot at, they're able to leave that area. Like, there's no reason they have to be there. Or, and Congress has not authorized it. Now, maybe that implicates the insurance policy.

Insurance policy, you probably have to be current on your alignment with your constitutional war powers. And so, they're not paying for this FAA team when all state gets the bill. Do they, this is, they'll claim this under the umbrella of an AUMF, like a 20 plus year old AUMF. I don't even know if they bother anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And our allies aren't there. So the AUMF authorizes us to fight al-Qaeda wherever we find them. The problem in Yemen is that our allies are al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda are fighting the Houthis. Right. So that's not going to fly either. Well, you'd think.

Did you just say that's not going to fly? Pretty good. I did not even do that one on purpose, but wow, it really worked. Less amusing, but even more disturbing, perhaps, development out of Yemen. We can put this next element up on the screen. So there are, as you know, as everybody knows, a bunch of amateur OSINT people out there who go around monkeying with Google Earth, posting things that they find, and declaring them to be interesting to the world. If that's your hobby, fine. Enjoy yourself. You know, social media, go ahead. There are some people who have been going around looking at Google Earth images of Yemen and claiming to have been able to spot

Houthi missile launch sites or Houthi bases. Okay, again, I guess like if that's how you want to spend your time, go ahead and do that. So a couple of accounts posted the exact coordinates of what they said was a missile, you know, some type of base slash missile launch situation in a quarry in Yemen. We can put this next element up on the screen. And the U.S. struck that precise coordinate. This is wild. Killed. The reports are, and Shuib Al-Mawasi, who's our reporter in Sana'a, confirmed for us that this area just outside of Sana'a was struck. A significant number of civilians were killed.

The reporting is eight. And so we know that this person posted this image, posted these coordinates, and then the U.S. struck these coordinates and that there was nothing there. Like, we all know this. Now, what was the time lapse between the two? A couple weeks. A couple weeks. And so the question then is, is this the strangest coincidence ever? Or is CENTCOM pulling targets from random Twitter users and then striking them? Weirder possibility, what if somebody at CENTCOM has a burner that they're floating coordinates out onto? I think this is a person that's in Holland. They know who this person is. It's like a woman who's just interested in this stuff. Like,

also, they're wrong. Like, they blew it. Like, they killed civilians. Like, they didn't get this right. And so, this person posted screenshots of donations that she made to Doctors Without Borders and a Yemeni charitable group. Sorry. the Yemen Data Project, totaling 500 euros, like, as an apology, basically, for accidentally getting some people killed. Now, I'm not even that angry at this person because it's CENTCOM that should not be grabbing information for this person. This is a really weird account. I'm going through it right now.

Yeah. Voleky Han. It's very strange. It's very, very weird. It's like, it's almost like a belling cat type account. Right, but it's just a random person-ish. Ish. But who knows?

Right, who knows? The response that mirrors the way I feel about it was from somebody who said, we don't want your donations. We don't need them. Just stop publishing false aerial photos. You're publishing civilian areas as military zones and causing the killing of our people. Even if we assume that they are military zones, why are you hostile to us? What is your interest in this? And so that's actually the question I have too. It's like, why are you doing this? So I reached out to this account.

They did not hear back. I did not hear back. I also reached out to CENTCOM to ask if it's the case. And there was another account as well that had posted this same query. So I reached out to ask, is it the case that you're pulling these from Twitter? Yeah. It certainly is the case, we know, that at least for some of their, and we know this from sources around the Pentagon, that they are pulling, we do know for sure they are pulling some of their damage assessment from Twitter, because that has circulated in the Pentagon. Like, after a strike, there'll be some social media account, like posts from, that are not U.S. government or U.S. military accounts, just random people. Some of these are just strident, like anti-Houthi partisans. And they'll say, this is what

happened in the strike. And CENTCOM will use that in their analysis so we do know that they are willing to use um right what they euphemistically call uh open source intel and and whatever i mean presumably whatever led this open source intel collector who interestingly has ceasefire now in the i saw that yeah ceasefire where in in the bio. Like what? The bio of this account is Yemen things. I know, but it's like, where do they want to ceasefire? Yeah, it's very odd. Yemen things, learning as I post, ceasefire now. Then why are you putting up coordinates for people to bomb? So presumably, obviously, whatever led this account to that spot could potentially be leading CENTCOM to that spot.

I mean, it wouldn't necessarily have to be a coincidence. Yeah, except it was a total blunder. Like it was just a misreading. It's very, very weird. It's an incredibly, deeply strange story. I'm glad that you asked the government about it because if they're pulling this stuff and it's wrong from Twitter accounts, I mean, I guess it's one thing if it's right. It's still very odd if it's right, if they're actually getting it from Twitter and not just sort of following the same breadcrumbs, but a deeply, deeply strange situation. And you can understand how it's going to land with people in Yemen. I mean, it looks to people in Yemen like complete casual destruction. Yes, and it's also completely ineffectual. I mean, it's effective at killing

innocent people. But when it comes to actually degrading the capacity of the Houthis to fire at ships, it's simply not effective. They just tilted an aircraft carrier and knocked a, what do they call it, a hornet, whatever, to the bottom of the Red Sea, a $70 million plane. Meanwhile, the Houthis, in an interview with Shuweb, a top official there, was effectively responding to Trump and Hegseth, who said that if the Houthis stop shooting at American ships, we will stop shooting at them. This Houthi political leader, on the record, told Dropsite News, we will stop. You stop attacking us and then we will stop attacking you. Done. Agreement.

Our problem is with Israel. And they're not even asking Israel to enter into a ceasefire at this point. They launched this renewed siege of shipping because Israel was blocking aid into Gaza. So, if Israel would just allow aid back in, now at this point, they want Israel to return to the ceasefire terms that they had agreed to. But that's it. Their beef is with Israel, not with us. And so they have accepted our offer. Yet here we are, bombing innocent people, trying to degrade their capacity, not doing it. And right now, it's just kind of funny that this ship, I mean, it's sort of funny that the ship fell off the aircraft carrier. Trump could get somebody killed. Also, that could have been a lot worse. I just found at Vlecky Hahn cited in West Point's, a report from West Point's Combating Terrorism Center as a reliable, the quote, ever resourceful analyst at Vlecky Hahn.

This is a West Point paper. All right. Well, this is pretty strong confirmation that this account is considered credible. What was it called? Ever Reliable. Ever Reliable. Ever Reliable. Well, not always. Ever Resourceful.

Ever Resourceful. Yes. Okay. They're resourceful. They're using Google Earth. This was in the case of, it says, the ever resourceful analyst at Vlekihan's use of purchased commercial satellite imagery. And this is from last year.

So it's not like an old paper or anything. And it's cited actually in the footnotes of this report from West Point. So yeah, so okay. So they do actually think this person is credible. That ups the likelihood that they relied on this person's Google Earth imagery to launch this erroneous and deadly airstrike close to 100%. What this means is that the military is paying attention to this particular open source account. Right. So it would make it... That's much stronger. I mean... Yeah, exactly. Separately, and also relatedly, and we won't...

We were going to put up some of this video, but we decided not to because even for this one, that the U.S. had said hit a Houthi base, actually hit an African migrant detention center. And so far, the death toll is at least 68. We struck a detention center filled with people. And the images that have come out of it of bodies mingled with the rubble are just gruesome and horrifying. So you can go find them if you want to. We were going to play it just so that you didn't have to take our word for it. But I think you probably trust us enough at this point that we can tell you that it happened. We did that.

I mean, the video, if people go pull it up. You can find it. Yeah, you can find it. Recommended viewing, unfortunately, in a national scandal, the way that a mob of pro-Israel protesters assaulted two different women. One of them is going to do her first video interview and share some of her own footage that she captured while this mob was pursuing her. So stick around for that. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast,

Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband

at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try.

She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month

and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.

My favorite line on there was my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring'm curious. Do they, like, rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now, too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is,

and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's, like, really the GOAT. Like, he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me, just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy, or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. So on Thursday night, Itamar Ben-Gavir appeared at a synagogue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where he was met by protesters as well as pro-Israel counter-protesters. As you may have heard, because it's become a national story by this point, two women were chased and assaulted that evening. Eric Adams has since come out and said that he wants to press charges,

but the women have not come forward publicly. One of those women was just simply a neighborhood resident and a bystander. She's joining us today. She wants to continue to remain anonymous, and she's also provided us for the first time some video footage that she took from her perspective. You've probably seen a lot of the footage of the crowd kind of assaulting her and harassing her as she's separated from the rest of this protest, but you'll be able to see some of this shortly. But let's bring in our Crown Heights resident. Welcome to CounterPoints. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Thank you for your interest in this story. Yeah, for sure. So first of all, can you tell us like how you wound up Thursday evening at this protest? How did you know that there was a protest going on?

Sure, yeah. So, you know, it was kind of later in the evening around 10, 10 30, and a helicopter had been hovering over my building for around 30 minutes. Um, so I went outside to see what was going on. Um, and I encountered the aftermath of a protest when I arrived at, um, Kingston Avenue and Eastern Parkway, right where the Shabbat is. And so, yeah, so what happened next? Yeah, so I was standing on the sidewalk. There were tons of people, hundreds of people in the street and on the sidewalk, pretty much only Orthodox Jewish people, mostly men. And then there were some other neighbors like myself standing on the sidewalk, just watching, just watching the scene to see what was going on. And I want to say that's an important point because actually we had reported

earlier that you were a pro-Palestine demonstrator and that's not the case. So to be clear, you were just sort of a bystander who was watching the chaos unfold in your neighborhood, right? That's right. And so I understand that. Well, why did they mistake you for somebody that needed to be assaulted? Yeah. So what happened and it really quickly, was that people near me began filming and I didn't want to be on anyone's camera roll. So I pulled up my scarf over my face. And I just want to be clear that it was not a keffiyeh. It wouldn't matter if it was, but it wasn't. And that was really, that just escalated things almost immediately.

A woman began screaming at me. Um, uh, she was already screaming at the police. Then she started screaming at me, uh, for me to, that they need to get me out of there. And almost immediately a group of like a hundred guys encircled me, um, and just started shouting like just vile insults at me. They were saying you're a waste of semen, you're a failed abortion. They were threatening to rape me. They're telling me to go back to Palestine. And I also just want to say that I was standing right next to a long line of police. And as this began to happen, I moved closer to the police because I thought that that would afford me some safety.

And I was wrong because they did not do anything to intervene. And they really just stared straight ahead with their eyes glazed over as if no crime, nothing was happening before their eyes. I want to play a little bit of the footage here if we can roll that control room. What's up, man? You see the fact that you guys are lettering is the fact you guys want violence. When we went closer, they attacked us.

You're a little idiot. I live here. I'm allowed to be here just as much as you are. You're some weird-ass post-Palestinian motherfucker. Is that you? You want someone to bend you over and f**k you like they're doing to the Jews in f**king Palestine? You're f**king insane. Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! Go to Gaza! Go to Gaza and get r**ked! Oh, Maggie.

Go to Gaza. You're sh**t. You're sh**t. You're not just babies, you guys. And you can see in that video, the police standing there. You pay taxes to be protected by the police. They're standing there in that video. And so how did you end up getting out of the situation? Was anybody other than the police trying to help? What happened as you tried to get away from that harassment? Yeah. So as I tried to leave the situation to get away,

another officer from somewhere else on the street came over and he saw this mob following me and he tried to escort me home. And so we walked in the direction of my home and this mob of men followed. And as they followed, they were again saying, go back to Palestine. And in Hebrew, shouting death to Arabs. They were kicking me in the back repeatedly. They were throwing things at my head. They hurled a trash can at me. They threw a traffic cone at me. They were

spitting. It was just, it was really scary. And at a certain point, I realized that I couldn't lead this mob to my home, that that wouldn't be safe for me. And I turned on a different street away from the direction of my home, where they kind of cornered me and this one officer against a building, which is where they were started like throwing the trash can and the traffic cone at me. And, and I really just, I didn't know what to do or where to go because I couldn't go home and the police weren't there to stop. I mean, they were there, but they weren't stopping this. And it was really terrifying. Finally, as we're like cornered against this building, a cop car pulled up in the middle of the street. And I just ran for my life through this crowd of men who were shouting, get her. And I jumped in the back of the police car

and then those police drove me to my house now what were you thinking as you're kind of going down the street and the mob is around you because i'm reminded of this time where i got jumped by three guys in an alley behind my my apartment and i remember thinking i just remember don't go down don't go down because if like i knew that if i went down onto the ground then you know then then you're dealing with feet rather than just, rather than just fists. And I was eventually able to get away without actually going down onto the, onto the, onto the floor of the alley. So I'm wondering if there were any thoughts going through your mind as you're like getting hit, kicked in the back and like, you know, things

are getting thrown at you, um, of what you needed to do to like get yourself out of this situation yeah um i mean i will say i have a very strong fight instinct and i was fighting very hard to repress it in those moments because i knew that they wanted me to respond um in that way they wanted me to fight back so that they could escalate things and have an excuse to hurt me further. And it was just like, I really had to repress that the whole time and instead put my mind to keeping myself safe. And there wasn't a lot of conscious thought outside of don't react physically and don't leave them to your home. You know, outside of that, it was just like a lot,

it was a lot of terror. It was just this feeling of terror that was there for me. And what response have you received since all of this happened? I know Eric Adams has sort of put out an attempt to get in contact, have the police followed up. What have you heard in the last several days? Yeah, you know, I'm in such a tricky position here because I want to call out all of the police inaction and lies that they've been telling. And at the same time, I really want them to take action on my behalf and the people of New York's behalf.

And I think those two desires of mine are in conflict with each other. But I'm going to say anyway, like the police didn't do anything. Nobody tried to get in contact with me. They were saying that they reached out to me and I filed a report and that was a lie. Um, I eventually did get in touch with a detective a couple of days ago and I was able to file a report. And yeah, and I think that the police have just been spreading a lot of misinformation about what happened. And that's really frustrating for me. And so you did speak to a detective. Would you testify if they were able to find, you know, able to identify these men who did this?

I would, yeah. Yeah, it was interesting to see Eric Adams finally come out because there's a—it took a significant a kind of pro-Palestine demonstrator, the kind of rules don't apply. They can just get beaten up. And I wonder if them finally realizing that you actually weren't. You were just a person who lives in the neighborhood. If that played some role, did you get any indication from the detective of how important kind of his bosses see this case and what it was that moved them kind of to actually do something? Yeah. So I think I talked to the detective on Monday afternoon and they seemed to really be scrambling. He had told me that they had only just gotten the directive that they were going to be investigating this like a couple hours prior.

So this all happened on Thursday night where the police, again, watched it happen. And they didn't take any action until this video went viral over the weekend. And the pressure and then there was pressure on the mayor and the NYPD. And not that any of this matters, because you were just there. But I'm curious, are you Jewish? Are you Christian? Are you atheist, apathist? And do you have a view on the politics here? Like I said, it doesn't matter. Nobody should be beaten up, no matter what they think, wherever they are on the spectrum, and you were just there, but I'm also just curious. Yeah, no, I'm not religious at all. And I do support the rights of Palestinians

to live in a free state of their own. And I think, like, you know, what happened to me, it really gave me a glimpse into the daily reality of Palestinians under occupation. They're subjected to violence, dehumanization, abandonment. And what happened to me isn't isolated. It's part of a broader system of violence. And that needs to be, that needs to end. My last question is about the situation in Crown Heights. And people are sort of familiar with the historical tensions that have simmered over in Crown Heights.

And what's very frightening, one of the many things that's very frightening about your experience and about the video, is how this anger seems to be bubbling into something very, very dangerous right now. So I wanted to ask, I mean, this is kind of a meta question, but there's a reason that you want to speak out anonymously. And I imagine that it has to do with your safety. So if you could speak to that and the situation in Crown Heights, whether you see it as something that's very dangerous right now, that would be much appreciated. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I'm absolutely afraid for my own safety in the neighborhood I lived in and have lived in for almost a decade. I'm afraid of being recognized. And yes, there's a long and fraught history of tensions involving this community in Crown Heights. I would say like two weeks ago, members of the Orthodox Jewish community brutally beat an elderly black man in a wheelchair and threw him to the sidewalk.

Earlier that night, you know, you mentioned it before, like that same mob that attacked me, they threw a brick at a woman's face. They assaulted an anti-Zionist, Hasidic man that night, also throwing him to the ground and removing his religious head covering. And like, you know, I've lived here for a long time. I know the history, like the Orthodox Jewish community rains terror on this neighborhood with impunity. And I don't normally feel that tensions walking through the street as a white woman, but I am aware of it. I am aware that they are afforded certain privileges

that not everyone else in the neighborhood is. All right. Yeah, as we saw, the event happened Thursday night in full view of all the police, and nothing happened until Monday, until there's a spotlight put on it. So thank you so much for sharing your perspective,

the videos, and your side of this terrifying event. Yeah, we really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day.

The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother.

She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.

My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah yeah because i bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too so his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like yo your dad's like really the goat like he's a legend so he gets it what does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy, or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Joining us now is Chernobot, editor of the Africanist Press, and also we can put this element up on the screen, the author of the tremendous book, The Ebola Outbreak in West Africa, Corporate Gangsters, Multinationals, and Rogue Politicians. We spoke with Cherno a year or two ago about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and we can put a link to that interview that we did down in the

show notes. Embarrassed to say, I hadn't read the full book by the time that we had you on then, because we were moving fairly quickly, but I've since read it. It's really a masterpiece. I'd recommend it to everybody. It's also a fairly short book, so there was no excuse that I hadn't read it yet. But it runs through the history of kind of multinational corporate and colonial involvement in medical research in Africa, and then, you know, leads up into Ebola and the response. And I'll let you talk about it a little bit because we're going to talk about some other things in this segment. But you basically demonstrate with authority that the story that we're told about how the Ebola outbreak happened is ludicrous, has no evidentiary basis, and that the more

likely cause is the shoddy lab that was doing Ebola research in Sierra Leone. Anything you want to add about that? Yes, it's been 10 years now since I published that book or since I wrote that book. And it's interesting to see that the conversation that we started 10 years ago still is relevant today, especially when we talk about COVID and the pandemic. It was five years before COVID. At the time when the outbreak happened, the official narrative was that the outbreak started in Guinea and they identified Emily Warman, a two-year-old or less than two-year-old child, an 18-year-old boy,

as the index case of the outbreak. They alleged that the child had participated in the haunting and grilling of a bat. So my book challenges that, what we call the official narrative, raising questions that would have allowed people to look into the biodefense research operation that was happening in eastern Sierra Leone dating back to 2004, 10 years before the outbreak.

But I think 10 years ago when the book came out, it was very difficult to have that conversation because any attempt to have a conversation that challenged the dominant narrative, as we called it then, was considered a conspiracy theory. So very few people were willing to have that kind of conversation. So I traveled around the world at the time, going to Europe, across the United States,

and in some African countries to promote the book. You know, 10 years down the line, I think now we have some kind of a significant amount of people who are perhaps willing to listen to that kind of, you know, the possibility that the outbreak that killed thousands of people in West Africa and still has a lingering socioeconomic impact and psychological impact on the population of West Africa. I'm talking about people who lived in Sierra Leone, in Liberia and Guinea, the epicenter of that epidemic, are still unaware of the causes and origin of that outbreak.

We've heard so much about COVID, which happened five years afterwards. There has been some kind of congressional discussion, some kind of White House conversation around COVID. But no such conversation has happened for the victims of the epidemic in West Africa. And I had said in my book that what we witnessed in West Africa in 2015 was a prelude, was a dress rehearsal to what the world will face with this whole idea of pathogens being part of warfare, bioterrorism, and all these kinds of things. So I'm happy that we're still talking about this 10 years later. I'm hoping that this conversation will loom large,

that the victims of the Ebola outbreak will get justice, at least we'll be able to understand how that outbreak that killed their family members, their relatives, their friends and neighbours. We need the truth. We need some kind of a disclosure of information around what corporations we are doing, what universities and research scientists, because we're talking about the same institutions,

same individuals who are involved with COVID. We are the ones who are involved in West Africa. And it's relevant. The conversation is relevant today, I think, for a lot of reasons. But one of them is that here in the West, the debate around what we call, quote unquote, foreign aid is that the Democrats will say, you know, kind of foreign aid is good and we should do it because it's good. And also it helps the United States, you know, with our soft power and people love us because we do it. The Republicans will say foreign aid is good because, you know, it's charity and it helps people, but it's not our business. Like we don't need to do

it. They need to take care of themselves. But there's really no debate over whether or not, you know, it's fundamentally a good thing. So that's why I wanted to have you on today, because obviously, you know, somebody who is getting, you know, access to HIV treatment, like they need that treatment as a particular individual. But taking it from a micro case to a macro case, let's talk about what the fallout has been in the regions where you cover to both the pulling back of USAID, but also what has happened in the wake of some of the quote-unquote aid or investment projects that have rolled out through DFC or MCC. We'll talk about those separately. First, what was your reaction when you saw the cuts to USAID? And from your understanding,

what have been, you know, how is Africa responding? Well, I think the problem here, we entered into a problem because when these real conversations that affect people's lives, we're talking about women and men, you know, children who have suffered from dictators, from bad governments, from corruption in Africa. And when we have this kind of conversation, the risk is that when it becomes partisan, we lose the importance of scrutinizing international relations. To what extent has international relations affected the lives of ordinary people? In the case of Sierra Leone, we've been raising these issues. We've said clearly that we are not against what you might call foreign direct investment

or genuine solidarity and support that appeals to people. But what we've witnessed in the last 60 years is a kind of relations that has undermined real development. Not only that, that has imposed huge debts, non-transparent debts and contracts that have affected lives. You know, we raised in the last five years, for example, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation in Sierra Leone acquired, you know, huge contracts in infrastructure projects,

telecommunication projects, and these are amounts of money ranging to 412 million in one case for an electricity project that was never constructed. And the processes through which these contracts were awarded also did not comply with even U.S. laws regarding foreign direct investment in Africa or in other places. We raised these questions. Nobody listened. You know, the same thing with the Millennium Challenge Corporation that claimed that they have signed a compact agreement with Sierra Leone to support the energy sector in Sierra Leone with $480 million. And even as we speak today, more than 90% of the Sardinian population do not have access to electricity.

They do not have access to safe and pure drinking water. The healthcare system is broken. So when you talk about USAID, DFC and MCC giving money or loans or credit or charity to countries like Sierra Leone, the citizens will be wondering where this money is going, because there's no evidence of that on the ground. So I would say that, rationally speaking,

if we remove the partisan aspect of this conversation, we have to look at the real impact of these so-called development assistance or loans or credit or charity whatever you might want to call it but it hasn't translated into real development it hasn't changed the living conditions of the people of many of these countries israeli is one case but yeah you can find this in any african country this is why many african citizens do not you know are not really affected by this the politicians the, the corporations, the companies who have been benefiting from this

are the ones that have been complaining. And unfortunately, we do not have an opportunity of speaking to the people who are directly impacted by these developments. When these conversations are being held, we always listen to opinion leaders or representatives of these corporations who tend to complain about the withdrawal of so-called aid and charity that has not really benefited the millions of people across Africa and in other places on whose names and conditions these supposed charitable programs have been done. on. So we have to, in order to get at this conversation, we have to have this conversation

outside of the Democrats or the Republicans or whatever party. When issues of development and human rights and peace are being discussed and we talk, we bring these partisan issues into the conversation, we risk losing the reality and the impacts that these situations tend to have on the real lives of people. I have been one individual that has reported on corruption and human rights violations in West Africa for more than 20 years. And one of the issues we've encountered every time we raise these questions to U.S. officials, for example, in the last administration, we held countless meetings with the State Department, representatives of diplomats who were in charge of West Africa.

They ignored these questions. They ignored the fact that, for example, I've been in exile for more than five, six years and I've been harassed transnationally for just raising these issues of corruption, that monies that are being awarded to corrupt regimes in West Africa are affecting human rights defenders, affecting journalists, they're affecting independent media,

our ability to hold leaders accountable. Every time we raise corruption issues, in fact, that's when the governments receive more money. In fact, you have a situation where politicians in West Africa will tell us that the more you write about corruption, the more we get money from Western countries, including the United States. So this was a very problematic situation. It's not just the U.S. You also look at organizations like the IMF, the World Bank, who've been imposing debts, non-transparent debts on these countries. So we have millions of, hundreds of millions and billions of dollars in debts

and so-called aid that has not changed the conditions in Africa. It's more than 65 years now. Sierra Leone just celebrated what they call 64 years independence. And when you look at the country, the indices of poverty and underdevelopment are very stark. You know, you don't need to go too far. You just need to have someone on the street and ask them, how do you feel about what your government is doing? They will tell you the government is corrupt. The government is not responsive to their needs. And let's talk, I was going to say, Trina, let's talk more about that because a lot of people here in the United

States, when USAID, for example, was on the sort of cutting table in the early days of Trump's second administration, the media portrayed this as the sky was falling in the early days of Trump's second administration. The media portrayed this as the sky was falling in the United States. This was, you know, taking a wrecking ball to lowercase d democracy and human rights. And there are, you know, obviously cases where people's livelihoods and health and safety were affected by it, no question about it. But your experience suggests that this relic of the Cold War era that was meant to be a bulwark against the Soviet influence around the world is always, the aid is always coming with strings attached, that the question of democracy is not the pure question at hand when aid money is distributed, or when, yeah, even when aid money is

distributed and NGOs, non-governmental organizations, are bolstered by that aid money and when they are chosen, there's always a strategy that is very particular and not just about lowercase d, democracy. Your experience speaks to that. So can you tell our listeners and viewers a little bit about the reality behind the curtain of USAID and foreign aid? Well, I think what you call development assistance or foreign aid did in the case of Sweden, we take the last four or five years of the current government in power is that it emboldened them. It emboldened them to, you know, ignore, to violate human rights, to suppress citizens, including journalists, independent journalists like myself, with impunity, because they believed that they were backed by an administration that kept giving them money. When we raised the issues

of corruption regarding the non-transparent acquisition of contracts by corporations and companies funded by the DFC, the State Department went ahead and signed a $480 million agreement, a compact agreement, MCC agreement, with the Saryan government. This was less than a year ago.

And this was for an electricity project that they've been talking about for 15 years. And we've counted more than almost a billion dollars in debts or loan or credit, whatever you might call it, for the construction of a power plant that has never been built. And even as we speak, more than 90% of the population of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, do not have electricity. And we have it on the records that the MCC and the DFC has given Sierra Leone 480 million, in one case 412 million, we're talking about more than 800 million dollars of U.S. taxpayers' monies, you know, given to a government

for the construction and provision of electricity supply that has never been provided. The service is not available. So if you talk about the withdrawal of funding in that has never been provided. The service is not available. So if you talk about the withdrawal of funding in that case, people are not even going to be bothered because the money that was announced has not done anything on the ground. So the people who will be offended or who will be affected by that situation will be the politicians and the corporations and the companies and the contractors who are benefiting from these rogue relationships

and investment agreements that were non-transparent, that even violated U.S. laws. Because you cannot, on the books, you cannot spend U.S. taxpayers' money in a country that doesn't respect human rights, that doesn't respect the freedom of its own citizens. So the government of Sierra Leone felt emboldened by these corporate relationships, financial inducements to disregard accountability questions. And it's not just Sierra Leone. You can find this across many of the other countries in Africa. And if you look at the people who have been complaining, they are not regular African citizens. These are NGO workers. Right, NGO workers. That's what I'm asking about.

So the aid gets sent by, let's say, USAID, MCC, DFC, some of these international development, you know, finance corporations or institutions. So it gets sent out. In your experience, you've done so much corruption reporting. In your experience, how much of that money gets kind of stolen by African elites, Sierra Leone elites, and how much of it gets stolen by Western elites? And so it never even arrives for it to be stolen by the elites in Africa. Yeah, that is the question. In fact, three years ago, we've developed what we call in the African Express an illicit financial flows project. Why?

When we looked at the corruption on the ground, the amount of money, whether it's from the IMF and the World Bank that has been given, and we don't see the development, we decided to look at the transnational dimension of this corrupt arrangement. Because when you talk about corruption, in most cases, it tends to be localized, being seen as this government giving money and the African politicians and African bureaucrats are the ones that are stealing these monies. And what we've come to realize is that much of that money money and the African politicians and African bureaucrats are the ones that are stealing these monies. And what we've come to realize is that movements of transnational funds and how African governments themselves are just part of an auxiliary or pawns in this whole international racketeering enterprise that has developed, you know, for at least in the last 60 years

or 65 years. So we're looking at Africa from 1975 to present. And so it's difficult to even assign a percentage in this case. And that's the troubling question. How much agency can we assign to the African politicians themselves who are roped into this international

corruption enterprise? And this deals with sovereignty issues. It deals with elections and democratization where leaders who do not play along these lines fall out of favor with governments and they are easily kicked out of power. And those who agree to be used

or to participate in this international process are aided and abetted in rigging elections and to consolidate dictatorships. We saw that in the elections in Sierra Leone in June 2023, where people voted against the government and elections, people went to vote and the results are still absent. Even U.S. election monitors themselves said the elections were non-transparent, but the DFC and the MCC continued giving money or signing finance agreements with the Australian government. So we're inviting journalists now increasingly to reverse the scale and begin to look at transnationally, not just on the local African context,

how much money has been stolen. You take the case of Ebola. Much of the funds that went to roll back Ebola in West Africa was taken back by international organizations. Some of that is in my book. The numbers are so staggering that it's difficult to even compute them now. Maybe that's something that we can work on together. Real quickly, last question for you. I don't know if Emily has anything else.

My sense of how this plays out on the ground, and I'm curious for your take on this, is that the corruption that this produces ends up kind of crushing democracy in at least two different major ways. One is the one that you talked about, that the governments that are in power don't feel any obligation to respond to the will of the public and make reforms and improve their lives because they know that they have the backing of these U.S. institutions, whether they do it or not. So why bother with it? But then secondly, by infecting the system with so much corruption, it reduces the amount of engagement, I would think, that regular people have with their government. Because you can have a social democratic reformer who says he's going to do X, Y, Z when he gets into office, but the regular person just thinks he's just as corrupt as anybody else. And so when he gets in, he's just, he's, it's just a

different flavor of stealing from me. And so when, what that does is it, it breaks that bond between the people and the government and makes the, and makes government and makes democracy just a bunch of elections. And then if the elections don't go the right way, they just change the counting like they did in 2023. I remember we had you on to talk about that at the time. So is that sense that I have roughly accurate? How would you characterize it? Yeah, absolutely. It disempowers citizens because when you go to vote and you find out that your vote doesn't count

and your voice doesn't count, it silences people. It makes mockery of democracy. It turns neoliberal democracy into a facade where people do not believe in the electoral process. And this is dangerous because it opens up ideas. People begin to think about how to actualize their own citizenship, their right to have a say in government. The key to governance is trust. There has to be a fundamental trust between citizens and those they elect, where supposedly elected leaders cannot be held accountable and they cannot be punished when they violate the social contract between them and the electorate. It's a major

problem. And in the case of Africa, it's not just robbing African countries of their own sovereignty, their inability to have a say on the global stage, but also it disempowers regular citizens, especially when countries like the United States back autocratic leaders in Africa who steal money, who steal votes, and also steal the lives of their own people. People feel disempowered. They lose faith in government. They lose trust in their own leaders. And once that happens, it opens the way for conflict of all kinds.

And this is why you have this instability on top of the underdevelopment and the horrible conditions of poverty. There's no stability in Africa because people are constantly thinking about how to get rid of this burden that they've been dealing with for the last 65 years or more since the so-called independence, the transition from direct colonialism to what we have today, where indigenous African politicians from our own communities get elected into offices,

and they do not serve the interests of their own people, and they do not even listen to the interests of their own people. They do not care. They serve the interests of foreign corporations, and those are the people they are worried about. They're worried about whether they will be on the good books of the United States. Right now, many of the African leaders are worried. They are constantly thinking about hiring lobbies to be on the good books of the current administration,

especially in the case of Sierra Leone, a government that enjoyed tremendous goodwill from the Biden-Harris administration. Now they're constantly thinking about how to recalibrate their entire program to be on the good books of the current new administration in Washington because they need that to be able to undertake these, you know, to continue on the road to dictatorship and authoritarianism. So the United States needs to rethink its own relations with these countries.

And this is not a partisan conversation. It is way beyond Republican or Democrat. It deals with real people's lives. It deals with independence and self-determination and the lives of women and children who have been suffering for many, many years, who have no other opportunities. All they want is just peace, to be let alone,

to be able to walk free, to live, you know, to have the minimum standards of existence, electricity, good roads, healthcare. These are basic human needs. And we should be able to look at this problem beyond or outside of these boxes that we've placed ourselves, these partisan boxes. I think that is the issue, that's the message. Nobody in Africa is against foreign relations. What we are against is that foreign direct investment or foreign relations should not be conducted at the expense of the lives and liberty of African citizens. In the case of Sierra Leone, we're saying that any such engagement

should have at its core the protection of the lives and liberty of all Sierra Leoneans, including those of us who want to hold leaders accountable to the minimum standards of good governance and accountability. This should not be a difficult thing for anyone, regardless of your party ideology or persuasion. You should be able to support this kind of human demand. It's a demand for freedom and liberty, which everybody around the world aspires. Yeah, sounds reasonable to me. Charnobah, journalist at the Africanus Press,

editor, author of the great book, The Ebola Outbreak. Thank you so much for joining us. Very much appreciate it. Thank you for having me. All right, that's it for us today. You in here tomorrow? I don't know. We don't know, actually.

No, I don't think I am. Because we don't know. Sagar doesn't know what his schedule is. That's true. Nobody knows anything. Right. So you have to tune in to find out. We don't know, actually. I don't think I am. Because we don't know. Sagar doesn't know what his schedule is. That's true. Nobody knows anything. Right. So you have to tune in to find out. We'll definitely be here Friday.

It has been fun, like, having three people. Then that one Friday we had four people. We're just mixing everything up, having a blast over here. First 100 days. You never know what you're going to get from Breaking Points. That's right. Except the latest is half the Friday show is for premium subscribers. So go ahead and join. We're going to need your help with these brutal headwinds,

thanks to the trade war. So BreakingPoints.com, pull the trigger, become a premium subscriber. That's right. And now that we're on Fridays, one of the things we do on those shows is kind of catch up on some of the big picture things from the week. Because the trends of the things we do on those shows is kind of catch up on some of the big picture things from the week and because the the trends of the last week are sort of clear by the friday news cycle so i love doing those yeah you don't want to miss that yeah and you know we'll we'll save uh some of the best for the second half of course exactly exactly yeah tune in phoning it in the first half the premium subs get the good stuff breakingpoints.com and we don't know who will be back here tomorrow because saga is awaiting his baby, but we will certainly have someone here for you. Make sure to tune in for that.

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